Ottawa-based Sault Ste. Marie Kalle Mattson has released the track, "A Long Time Ago", from his forthcoming EP Avalanche. Mattson has had an avalanche of praise for his previous album Someday The Moon Will Be Gold, a record about his mom who passed when he was just 16. But the question for Mattson is how do you climb up from out under such an avalanche. So we asked him.

“The process of writing new songs after my last record has been a long & arduous one. The challenge with writing a record that is so personal & so autobiographical is how do you follow it up? How do you make something new that still means as much to you?

“I have been recording demos with my friend & incredible songwriter/musician, Jim Bryson on & off since last summer. Every few weeks I’ll go in with a batch of 5 to10 songs, we'll track them & eventually see which ones stick or not. These sort of self imposed deadlines of booking sessions with Jim have been really good with forcing me to finish songs & maybe not be too overly analytical. Primarily though I just don’t want to embarrass myself in front of him.

“I wrote “A Long Time Ago” really quickly the night before one of these sessions & I think it really encapsulates a lot of the themes on this new EP; anxiety, nostalgia, the past, the future... It’s basically about being in your early 20s & not knowing what the fuck your life is.

“The production on “A Long Time Ago” is probably one of the biggest departures in one of my songs ever. I had this delayed hip hop beat in my head the entire time in the studio and I sort of built the song around that, acoustic guitars and a ton of different synths, which is really a first for me. And yes if you were wondering, that is me singing."